Um. Er. Hmm. It would seem that there’s a new H2G2 book coming out:
An Englishman’s continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . .
Arthur Dent’s accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident.
Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.
Arthur’s chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world’s oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up . . . again.
And Another Thing . . . is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone’s favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.
It would be easy to go on a rant here about how they are raping Douglas Adams’ legacy, if not for the fact that DNA’s widow herself has blessed the project, not to mention there’s significant precedent (for example the Second Foundation Trilogy written after Asimov’s death, by scifi authors Benford, Bear and Brin). Plus, the long-awaited H2G2 movie was such a horrific waste of time that I think I’m all outraged-out as far as DNA’s legacy goes. I mean, what more could they possibly do? At least in a novel you have relative freedom to actually develop things like plot and whatnot. In a weird way, seeing the new Star Trek movie has also made me more amenable to giving someone else a chance at H2G2. It’s better than having nothing at all, and there’s a reasonable chance that it might even be good.
This is actually old news – the BBC had an article on it last fall, with some more detail on the author:
Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.
He said he was “terrified” by the prospect of creating a new Hitchhiker book almost a quarter of a century after being introduced to what he described as a “slice of satirical genius” in his late teens.
‘Pressure’
“My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series,” he said.
“But on reflection I realised that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding on to the spirit of Douglas Adams.
“I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books,” he said, adding that he was “determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written”.
well, ok then. sigh. please don’t suck, ok? It comes out in October. I guess I could pre-order it… heh. am I pathetic or what?
Oh man, the Second Foundation series was pretty bad. There were some ok things about it, but it got off to a really bad start and never really recovered…
I think I may be alone in not hating the H2G2 movie. Sure, they got some things wrong, but by itself, it’s a reasonably entertaining movie. While I wouldn’t say they entirely captured Adams with the movie, neither did they really soil it (in the way that, say, Paul Verhoeven did with Starship Troopers, for instance – now that was a tragedy). But again, it seems I’m one of the few who enjoyed both the book and the movie…
I’ll be honest, I havent read Second Foundation Trilogy. Since Benford, Brin and Bear are all solid writers, I didnt think they’d screw it up too terribly (I enjoy their respective own works).
If I look at teh H2G2 movie as just a movie, then yeah I agree it was funny and no worse than any other timepass scifi flick. But the people who made it invoked DNAs legacy at every turn, they swore that this would be the real thing. Thats something that even the Star Trek movie reboot didnt try to do – its one thing to try and manage expepctations from the hard core fans, but quite another to actively court those expectations.
Meh. Could be worse. I just picked up the final Dune book (“Sandworms of Dune”) and will read it out of bloody stupid mindedness although I’m certain it’s going to be krep. The previous one was bad, and I’ve heard nothing good about this one.